abandonware games sorted by popularity

Ah yes, the golden age of video games: where catching babies yeeted from burning buildings was a fun pastime. In Bouncing Babies, you play as a heroic volunteer with a trampoline, ...

If you’ve ever dreamed of commanding a WWII convoy while cold, stressed, and staring at a pixelated radar screen, Action in the North Atlantic (1989, DOS) has you covered. It...

Black Friday (1983) isn’t about shopping mayhem—though you might wish it were after trying to figure out what’s going on. This early DOS title is part stock marke...

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier takes the least-loved movie in the franchise and turns it into a game — which is bold, maybe even illogical. Released in 1989 for DOS, it trie...

If you liked Betrayal at Krondor, Return to Krondor is that younger cousin who tries real hard to live up to the family name. It's got 3D graphics (for 1998), turn-based combat, an...

Before Donald Duck’s Playground, most kids were told video games were a waste of time. Here, Donald proves otherwise by turning menial labor into an epic adventure. Want to s...

In 1986, Hacker arrived with a premise that felt thrillingly dangerous at the time: you, alone, tapping into secret computer systems and uncovering conspiracies. No explosions, no ...

It’s Pac-Man, except it’s… not. Cap Man is a low-budget clone with just enough charm to avoid immediate deletion. You’ve got the dots, the ghosts, the powe...

Super Cauldron is a platforming game developed by Titus Interactive and released in 1993 for platforms like MS-DOS, Amiga, and Amstrad CPC. In the game, you play as a witch on...

With a title like Pray for Death, you know you’re not signing up for a cheerful platformer. This is a fighting game with a gothic, heavy-metal aesthetic that screams 1996. It...

Space Quest: The Lost Chapter is a curious artifact released in 2001 by dedicated fans who decided Roger Wilco deserved one more misadventure. Essentially a remake and expansion of...

Back in 1983, IBM Centipede brought arcade bug-blasting straight to home computers, allowing office machines to moonlight as insect exterminators. This adaptation of the arcade cla...

Space 1889 (1990, DOS) is steampunk before steampunk was cool. Based on the tabletop RPG, it sends you to an alternate Victorian era where the British Empire has expanded — t...

Witchaven is an abandoned fantasy first-person shooter (or "slasher", since you'll wield melee weapons) developed by Capstone and released by IntraCorp in 1995 for DOS and Windows....

Flying Tigers 2 (1994, DOS) doubles down on the formula of its predecessor and adds a bit more bite to the bark. The action is still brisk, but the skies feel busier, the stakes sl...

Omikron: The Nomad Soul (1999, Windows XP) is the kind of game that leans across the table and says, “What if we mashed every genre together and asked David Bowie to help?&rd...

The name Carnage says it all—this top-down racer is less about precision driving and more about smashing into your enemies until they resemble digital roadkill. It’s fa...

Twilight 2000 drops you into a grim alternate future where global conflict has gone spectacularly wrong, and survival is less about heroics and more about scraping by. Released in ...